Recently, the occurrence of acrylamide in a number of heated food products was published (Tareke et al. Chem. Res. Toxicol. 13, 517-522 (2000)). Since acrylamide is considered as probably carcinogenic for animals and humans, this finding had resulted in world-wide concern. Further research revealed that considerable amounts of acrylamide are detectable in a variety of baked, fried and oven prepared common foods and it was demonstrated that the occurrence of acrylamide in food was the result of the heating process.
A pathway for the formation of acrylamide from amino acids and reducing sugars as a result of the Maillard reaction has been proposed by Mottram et al. Nature 419:448 (2002). According to this hypothesis, acrylamide may be formed during the Maillard reaction. During baking and roasting, the Maillard reaction is mainly responsible for the color, smell and taste. A reaction associated with the Maillard is the Strecker degradation of amino acids and a pathway to acrylamide was proposed. The formation of acrylamide became detectable when the temperature exceeded 120° C., and the highest formation rate was observed at around 170° C. When asparagine and glucose were present, the highest levels of acrylamide could be observed, while glutamine and aspartic acid only resulted in trace quantities.
The official migration limit in the EU for acrylamide migrating into food from food contact plastics is set at 10 ppb (10 micrograms per kilogram). Although no official limit is yet set for acrylamide that forms during cooking, the fact that a lot of products exceed this value, especially cereals, bread products and potato or corn based products, causes concern.
Several plant raw materials are known to contain substantial levels of asparagine. In potatoes asparagine is the dominant free amino acid (940 mg/kg, corresponding with 40% of the total amino-acid content) and in wheat flour asparagine is present as a level of about 167 mg/kg, corresponding with 14% of the total free amino acids pool (Belitz and Grosch in Food Chemistry—Springer N.Y., 1999). The fact that acrylamide is formed mainly from asparagine (combined with reducing sugars) may explain the high levels acrylamide in fried, oven-cooked or roasted plant products. Therefore, in the interest of public health, there is an urgent need for food products that have substantially lower levels of acrylamide or, preferably, are devoid of it.
A variety of solutions to decrease the acrylamide content has been proposed, either by altering processing variables, e.g. temperature or duration of the heating step, or by chemically or enzymatically preventing the formation of acrylamide or by removing formed acrylamide.
In several patent applications the use of asparaginase for decreasing the level of asparagine and thereby the amount of acrylamide formed has been disclosed. Suitable asparaginases for this purpose have been yielded from several fungal sources, as for example Aspergillus niger in WO2004/030468 and Aspergillus oryzae in WO04/032648.
Although all L-asparaginases catalyze the same chemical conversion, this does not mean that they are suitable for the same applications. Various applications will place different demands on the conditions under which the enzymes have to operate. Physical and chemical parameters that may influence the rate of an enzymatic conversion are the temperature (which has a positive effect on the chemical reaction rates, but may have a negative effect on enzyme stability), the moisture content, the pH, the salt concentration, the structural integrity of the food matrix, the presence of activators or inhibitors of the enzyme, the concentration of the substrate and products, etc.
Therefore there exists an ongoing need for improved asparaginases for several applications having improved properties.